It's Wednesday, the 15^th of October 2025. Several key commodity prices are on a run, with record high prices for gold and silver, and a new peak for iron ore as well as surging interest in rare earths and uranium pushing local mining stocks higher. Investor risk appetite is rising after President Donald Trump’s administration signalled an openness to a deal with Beijing to dampen trade tensions. Meanwhile, China’s Ministry of Commerce urged further negotiations to resolve outstanding issues.

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News in brief

The Reserve Bank board is in no hurry to cut interest rates, and any further changes in monetary policy will depend on data releases, notwithstanding current rate settings are slowing the economy, according to the minutes of the central bank’s latest board meeting.

Australia will begin manufacturing missiles domestically by the end of this year, with the announcement coming days ahead of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s meeting US President Donald Trump.

A price war in the supermarket sector might be coming ahead of Christmas, with Coles chief executive Leah Weckert saying she will do whatever it takes to remain competitive with rival Woolworths.

SEEK’s latest pulse check on job ads in the market shows that working from home remains very popular in insurance, as well as tech and consulting. Trades, hospitality and manufacturing are the sectors least likely to mention WFH in jobs ads.

Taylor Swift has broken another music industry record, with opening-week sales of her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, eclipsing those of Adele’s 25 from a decade ago.  The album ended the week with the equivalent of just over 4 million sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate.

Fear-o-meter

Until now, Australia has not been overly impacted by the Donald Trump tariff-induced trade war. But things are about to get serious.

The United States and China in coming weeks will try and do a trade deal. Notwithstanding Trump is full of bluff and bluster on these issues, as it stands the US has imposed big tariffs on Chinese goods and China has retaliated.

US-China is the defining trade relationship of the current era, and because of Australia’s ties with our north Asia partner, what happens between Washington and Beijing impacts our economy.

An all-out trade war would be bad news for the local economy, currency and many of our big businesses. Judging on what’s happened so far this year, that it probably unlikely. But the next few weeks are critical for Australia’s longer term economic outlook.

Business By Numbers

The top 3 numbers to know for the week, brought to you by Xero

$US52.50 an ounce: the price of silver, resetting the highs of 1980.

44pc: what markets have priced in as the chance of a rate cut in November.

4 million: sales of Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl in its first week of release in the US.

Fear & Greed Q+A today

On Commonwealth Bank's economic forecasts for 2026, including the outlook for house prices:

One of the hard and fast rules of economics in Australia is that when interest rates are coming down, house prices start to rise. And we're certainly seeing a solid pick-up in house prices now. Our latest forecasts are that we'll see a 6% increase in house prices this year and a 4% increase in house prices next year. So 10% for the cycle.

 

That's a relatively conservative view because there are some factors working against higher house prices right now. We've got population growth starting to slow. We've still got some affordability constraints in the market. And this is a relatively shallow interest rate cutting cycle. We're predicting only 100 basis points of cuts in the whole cycle from start to end. So for those reasons, we went with a relatively conservative increase of around 10%. I think if you look at the data so far, it's possible there's some upside risk to that forecast. We're seeing house prices pick up quite strongly, a little ahead of our expectations. And there's certainly a sense of activity and anticipation in the market as investors look for returns."

Greed-o-meter

Rare earths miners had a good day yesterday - but then again, they've had a good 12 months. These are the biggest on the ASX:

Source: Market Index

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